


Be Fruitful I

by Daegaer



Series: Be Fruitful [1]
Category: Jewish Legend & Lore, Jewish Scripture & Legend, תנ"ך | Tanakh
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, F/M, Midrash, Sibling Incest, Sibling Rivalry, Talmud
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-15 08:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1299109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daegaer/pseuds/Daegaer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Be Fruitful I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TLara (larissabernstein)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/larissabernstein/gifts).



In the beginning when things were still new, though not as new as they had been, the children of Hawwah and haAdam thought to take each other to husband and wife, for who else was there, in all the wide lands between the Four Rivers of the World? And for a time all was well between them, though Qayin the first-born and Hevel the second-born were always much given to looking sidelong at each other and speaking in hearty, joking tones that the women of the family knew foretold spite and trouble.

"Am I not the first-born of Hawwah, the mother of all living?" Qayin said. "Do I not follow our father haAdam in eating bread through making the earth give up its yield by the sweat of my brow? I must marry first."

"Indeed you are a hard worker, my brother," Hevel said. "But does a man live by bread alone? My work with the flocks provides wool and skins for our clothes, and food for Heaven itself. Marry first by all means, dearest brother, but it is to my marriage feast that the Lord Yahveh will come as a guest! And is it not true that the sisters born at one birthing with me are prettier than the sister born along with you? I will have two beautiful brides to your one!"

"As to that," Qayin said, as if it were already settled, "a first-born son should claim a double portion. You need but one wife, Hevel."

So they quarrelled, and they married in due course, Qayin becoming the husband of the sister with whom he was born, Awan, and Hevel becoming the husband of one of the sisters with whom he was born, Kalmanah. Now, both Awan and Kalmanah were very beautiful, but their younger sister, Balvirah, was more beautiful still, and both Qayin and Hevel turned their eyes to her often.

"I am your husband, I forbid you to speak to that man's wife!" Qayin said to Awan, thinking she might tell his secrets to Kalmanah.

"But she is my sister!" Awan said in annoyance.

"Will you whisper all that we do to that woman?" Hevel said to Kalmanah. "Stop seeing her!"

"She lives but a step away! And is she not the daughter of our mother? How can I ignore her?" Kalmanah said.

"Good day, Balvirah, will you not take your fill of these cucumbers I have gathered for you from Awan's garden?" Qayin said to his younger sister.

"Cucumbers? Wouldn't you prefer this fine-spun wool, soft as a cloud, that Kalmanah prepared just yesterday?" Hevel said.

"Excuse me, my brothers, Hawwah our mother is calling me," Balvirah said, and hurried past, looking neither of them in the eye.

"Speak to your sister, make her see sense!" Qayin cried to Awan, as did Hevel to Kalmanah.

"Do Hawwah and haAdam have more than one husband and wife?" Awan asked, exasperated.

"Do you need to be greater that our father in this regard?" Kalmanah said, scraping a hide clean with more than her usual vigour.

"HaAdam has never been a _son_ ," Qayin said. "He does not understand that I must set a precedent for all first-borns who follow me." He frowned in puzzlement as his wife, first-born of all daughters, slammed her grindstone down on the grain so hard it cracked in two. "What?"

"HaAdam has never had an elder brother," Hevel said. "Just think, if I marry Balvirah, it'll really be one in his eye! Hah!"

"How flattering your speech is," Kalmanah said, scraping the hide so fiercely it became transparent. "I wonder that our sister has resisted you so long."

"I know," Hevel said in bewilderment. "Do you think her simple, perhaps? Kalmanah? Kalmanah, where are you going?"

*

Awan and Kalmanah went together to the tent of Hawwah their mother, and ate bread with her and Balvirah, away from the eyes of all men, for haAdam and Qayin were working in the fields, and Hevel with his flocks, and the children played nearby, with no strangers yet created to come and frighten them.

"Mother," Awan said, "the boys are idiots. Was that in the curse?"

"No," Hawwah said thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is to do with the nature of the soil of the land near Eden. It was rich and fertile and all kinds of things just popped up out of it, just as all sorts of ideas pop into the minds of men."

"And women," Balvirah said waspishly, for she had been accosted with offers of cucumbers and wool yet again that morning. "Was it a man who listened to the serpent, Mother?"

"Was it a woman who thought she could tell an outright lie to the Lord Yahveh?" Hawwah snapped back, then sighed, and smoothed down her daughter's hair. "Ah, child, we are all here now. Do not marry either if you don't want to – no doubt I will have another son in the fullness of time, and when he is a man you can marry him, and help to fill up the earth as we have been told to do."

"Tell your sons to calm down, my mother," Awan said. "Can they not be happy with the wives they have?"

"I will talk to them," Hawwah said. "Do not doubt they love you, my daughters, but remember that you are all still young. Barely one hundred years have passed since the Garden – all this will pass as you leave the days of your youth."

All the world knows the story of how strife grew between the brothers and how, the world being still new, Qayin became the first murderer. As for his sister-wife and the wife of Hevel, were they not the first deserted woman and the first widow? Such were the works of humans at the time of creation, though Hawwah consoled herself with the thought that such acts would no more occur as humanity left the days of its childhood behind.

 

 _Adam and Eve with Cain and Abel_ , by Giacinto Gimignani  
[source](http://www.arcadja.com)

**Author's Note:**

> The names for Adam and Eve's daughters are taken from the 2nd century BCE _Book of Jubilees_ (Awan), and the 7th century CE _Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius_ (Kalmanah) - the 17th century CE _Seder HaDorot_ shows that this name (along with Balvirah) was accepted by some Jewish writers for a daughter of Adam and Eve. Traditionally, Cain was born with a twin sister, as was Abel - some traditions say that Abel was born along with two sisters, and that the cause of his fatal argument with his brother was over who should marry the "extra" sister, which I have followed here.


End file.
